The body and the child as objects of discourse

Abstract

The work in the clinic is based on the psychoanalytic listening of a clinical case involving a thirteen-year-old adolescent referred with a preliminary diagnosis of dyslexia. The investigations observe that the symptom should not be reduced solely to cognitive issues, but also presents itself as a formation of the unconscious, from which emerge the signifiers constituted through the subject’s relationship with language, which inscribes onto the subject's body the discourse of the desire of the Other. The case analysis shows that the symptom is articulated with the subjective entanglement of the mother-child relationship, revealing itself as a response to family distress and an attempt to mask the lack of the maternal Other. The work proposes reflections on the generalizing practice of diagnoses, which tends to disregard the forms of subjectivation and the singularity of the subject and their position within discourse. By listening to the subject’s history, the work demonstrates that psychoanalytic treatment enables new ways of functioning in relation to knowledge and invention in the face of suffering. It is concluded that psychoanalysis, by not relying on diagnostic norms, promotes a clinical approach that respects subjectivity and implicates the subject in the construction of their desire.